


Sunrise

by heichou_in_my_head



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age insecurity, Canon Compliant, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Married Ereri, as soft as a lifelong shit-joker can be, classic adopted Isabel, could be au if you like, papa connie, so much ereri fluff, soft old Levi in particular, the world is your oyster kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 22:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heichou_in_my_head/pseuds/heichou_in_my_head
Summary: Eren finds divorce papers in Levi's desk and decides that the best way to solve the problem is to become an amateur arsonist.





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> This drabble was born from a dream foureyes48 posted on tumblr, in which Levi reveals his insecurities about being older than Eren and eventually leaves him in spite of Eren's protestations. Apparently my subconscious couldn't handle that ending and so I had to rewrite the story for all our sakes. You're welcome.

“I’m sure I remember you saying you wish we had a fire in our bedroom,” Eren shrugged, hovering over Levi’s shoulder as he smothered the last embers.

“In a fireplace, dipshit. Spontaneously setting my documents alight wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“’Documents’? Is that what you call that trash?”

“…I didn’t mean for you to find them like that.”

Eren snorted loudly, but didn’t otherwise dignify this with a reply. Levi straightened up and looked at his husband’s furious face. He reached out to wipe a stray flake of soot off the end of his nose - Eren dodged his hand.

“Eren. It’s not like that. I was – enquiring.”

“Enquiring.”

“Yes. About what it entailed. How fast it could be done, under what circumstances – “

“Is this meant,” Eren interrupted, speaking as though he’d just woken up, “to reassure me? That you’re ‘enquiring’ about the concept of divorce?”

“Wait a minute,” Levi sighed, turning back to the ashes and scorch marks. Eren waited until he could wait no longer, and Levi looked up just in time to watch his long legs striding out of their bedroom. A few seconds later he heard the slam of their front door.

Many hours later, he found him sitting in the window seat of their dining room. It was the room Levi was most house-proud of because it overlooked his portion of the garden - a carefully curated rockery, neat and pristinely-proportioned. Eren had very pointedly not taken his boots off. They were caked in dry mud, his trousers dusty. Levi felt his brow spasm.

“I want to explain.”

“I want you to explain. You fucking bastard,” Eren added absently, not turning from the view.

Levi moved to stand in front of him, face impassive. Then, without warning, he knelt down. Eren stared dumbly at the top of his head, at the swirling genesis of jet-black hair almost smack in the centre, and instinctively he reached out to brace himself on Levi’s shoulders. Levi pressed his forehead into his dirty knees.

“I was in this position ten years ago,” he said, so quietly Eren had to lean down slightly to hear him. “It never occurred to me that ten years later I’d be fifty. You don’t think about those things when there’s someone like you around.”

Eren managed not to say anything, but Levi could tell he was also thinking about the morning Levi had proposed: short and blazing, a sunrise, a declaration that their love was the kind of constant you could set your watch to.

“But now my knees are sore in ways I never expected, and no, your pervy jokes are not welcome. Do you remember the other week when I forgot Connie’s surname? Or last month, I managed to sprain my own wrist. Usually your sister has to do that kind of shit for me.” Levi tsked. “Ever since my birthday…ah, it doesn’t matter what I do or how potent my Ackerman blood is. Eventually we all age, and I’m always going to be fifteen years older than you. What could you do with that fifteen years?”

“Levi – “

“I will not,” and here Levi stood up, one fluid movement that caught Eren off guard and had him grasping at Levi’s arms, “I will not be your burden –“

“Levi – “

“ – and I should have thought of that before, but I didn’t let myself think this far ahead. I was selfish. I couldn’t resist – you,” Levi finished, like a rake dragged over hot coals. “I – “

“Shit Levi, since when do you talk so much?” Eren cut him off, clamping his hand over Levi’s mouth. Levi stared at him in blatant horror - Eren had been gardening before he’d started the impromptu bedroom inferno, and his day apparently spent trekking through a swamp hadn’t helped. “Maybe you’re right - I need a husband who isn’t such a fucking chatterbox.”

“You said you wanted me to explain.” Levi pushed the hand away forcefully. “I’m explaining - ”

“Are you honestly thinking of leaving me?” Eren blurted out, now grasping at Levi’s jaw, trying to cup his face. “Are you really doing this?”

“…what?” Levi’s frustrated expression ironed out into pure bewilderment as he dodged Eren’s grubby paws. “Did a horse kick you in the head? If anything I wanted to offer you a chance to leave, you idiot. I told you: I was enquiring about how difficult it would be for you to legally separate from me, I wanted to have all the pertinent information. I don’t have anything better waiting for me out there. You do.”

“Levi.” Eren had settled for balling his fists in Levi’s shirt. “I can’t stand that. I really can’t stand that shit.”

“What shit is that?”

“You telling me what’s better. You telling me which burden I should carry.” Eren looked into Levi’s eyes unwaveringly, furiously; for a moment he saw the Eren he’d first met, straining against his chains in the dungeon. “Levi, there’s no trust in that. Fuck wanting the best for each other! That’s obvious, we’re way past that. What we need is to trust each other with the decision we’ve made to be here, right here. Right now. That’s what shit I mean.” He shook his head. “I really can’t stand it if you don’t trust me enough to know what I want. Not this far in.”

As he systematically unhooked Eren’s desperate fingers from his shirt, Levi digested this slowly. They had been married for a decade; there was little they didn’t share with each other, didn’t know about each other. That he’d let doubt creep into him, he now realized, without ever voicing his thoughts to Eren, was probably even more unsettling than randomly finding divorce papers in their house.

That was particularly cruel. He should have been much, much more careful.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, taking Eren by surprise. “The papers came home with me by accident. You should never have seen them. I would never – spring something like that on you.”

Eren eyed him warily. “I don’t know. You apparently weren’t very keen on actually talking to me. I might never have found out about this age shit until the divorce papers were sitting on our table, waiting for my signature.”

Levi’s arms snaked around Eren’s torso with such lightning speed that Eren was immobilised. “Stop.”

“You’re the one – “

“I know. Stop.”

They stood in silence for what felt like another decade. Neither had to say so, but both knew they were reliving their marriage: the little serenities, the little moments of peace and joy and complete contentedness that so uniquely manifest themselves through shared love. 

The sun set on Eren’s back. Levi watched the colours: red, orange, violent pink.

It looked more like a sunrise.

“I will never,” Eren announced to the darkening room, “ever regret this choice.”

~

Eren held the girl at arm’s length – Anne, she was called, after some character in a popular children’s story – and evaluated her solemnly. The name had been met with some hesitancy by the old squad, but Connie’s wife had proclaimed that no one else would even think about Annie Leonhart when they heard the name, it was so common – was every Anne within the Walls named after the legendary Female Titan?

Her robust common sense was often the only saving grace in the otherwise chaotic Springer household.

“Cuddle!” Anne insisted, grasping at the air between them. Eren pretended to deliberate for a minute before crushing her to his chest laughingly, the sound mingling with the girl’s shrieks of mirth. Through the open doorway to the next room he watched Connie clap his hands over his ears.

“Your own fault for having a young wife,” he heard a disembodied voice say from deep in the next room, and Connie hung his head in acknowledgement. “Another brat at – what, sixty-three? Don’t you have any shame, Connie?”

“Brat,” Anne announced smugly. Eren shook his head; it never ceased to amaze him how quickly toddlers picked up new words, how eager they were to innocently parrot their parents. Isabel had been the same. He could picture her now, sitting on Levi’s lap and stroking his cheek lovingly as she told him what a shithead he was. Levi struggling to contain his laughter so he didn’t encourage her. She may not have been their daughter by blood but she’d still managed to inherit Eren’s shit-eating grin and Levi’s foul mouth, a fact which simultaneously delighted and worried them.

It felt like a long time ago and like yesterday, all at once.

“Come to think of it,” he mused aloud, drawing Connie’s attention, “Anne is about the same age as our Isabel’s little one, right?”

“A little younger,” the disembodied voice drawled. “Flora was born in May.”

“I get it, I get it!” Connie threw his hands in the air. “I’m an old fart who’s got no business fathering a kid at this age. You happy?”

The voice paused a moment. “Very.”

Eren smiled and looked down at Anne. She was no longer interested in hugging him and had begun an investigation of his eyeglasses, including what appeared to be a very thorough structural appraisal - the cushioned arm of his chair was sending up tiny puffs of dust with every strike. He idly wondered if he should interrupt her unbridled joy in the interests of saving either object, but decided against it.

“Things can be replaced,” Levi had once said, watching benignly as Isabel chewed on the end of his brand-new sweeping broom. “Things aren’t anything, really. I never knew a soldier on his deathbed to say, “I wish I’d had more things”.”

Eren had spent more of their marriage than he’d care to admit begging Levi not to put things quite so morbidly in front of their child.

He brought Anne through to the next room and deposited her on her father’s lap. “Fart,” she greeted him solemnly, and Levi emitted a bark of laughter so sudden that Connie almost dropped her.

“Smart kid,” he intoned, motioning for Eren to sit beside him. He was sitting well out of the sun, his eyes too delicate for the brilliant sunset that was currently ravishing the windows. Eren also noted that he’d commandeered the most comfortable seat in the room from which to hold court; the former captain had mellowed in his old age, had slowly learned to allow himself the little comforts and selfishnesses that came so naturally to everyone else. It was a change that Eren championed vigorously.

“I was just thinking of Isabel. She was – “

“A living nightmare.”

“The greatest joy of our lives,” Eren agreed, brushing a piece of imaginary lint off of Levi’s immaculate shirt. Levi leaned in to him. “Right, Connie?”

“Unquestionably.” Connie was trying to keep Anne’s fist out of his airway. “Hey Jaeger, you wanna give me a hand here?!”

“I’m good.”

“You’re enjoying this huh, you bast – “

“Oi, brat,” Levi interrupted. He leaned down and opened his arms to the girl. “Your technique is lacking. Want to learn how to make a proper fist? Give your dad a chance to make us a decent pot of tea instead of the shit he usually throws together?”

“Shit,” Anne agreed, abandoning Connie’s lap for Levi’s.

“Thank you,” Connie muttered under his breath, taking his time to rise from his chair. Even the famously sprightly Captain Springer was beginning to feel his age these days. “Any chance you guys would be willing to stay on as live-in babysitters?”

“Denied.” Levi held a squealing Anne aloft, his still-wiry arms refusing to tremble. Haloed by the orange glow of the waning sun, she appeared misleadingly beatific. “But send the little one round to our place any time. Her fighting form is disgraceful.”

“She’s not two,” Eren said mildly.

“Earlier the better.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” Connie called back from the kitchen, where the nervous scraping of crockery could be heard. Connie’s inability to satisfy the Captain with his tea-making skill was infamous. “Not as young as I was the first time round, you know?”

“You find the energy,” Eren replied, hooking a finger under Anne’s chin. The toddler tried to do the same to him. “We weren’t exactly young when Isabel came to us, but you make it work. Yeah it’s tiring - but it’s also the best thing in the world.”

Levi said nothing. His hand on Eren’s knee was warm as they watched the colours dancing through Anne’s messy hair. Red, orange, violent pink. Almost forty years of shared sunrises, each one more beautiful than the last. 

“So no regrets?” Connie called distractedly.

Green eyes met blue over the tiny little head.

“Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> The honest tea is that I just don't believe the initial plot point would happen in the first place - it's just not realistic for Levi to be so cruel and thoughtless as to spring divorce papers on his partner or to not communicate with his partner, which is what happened in the dream - so that wasn't what I focused on too much. If that part feels out of whack, don't worry, I'm with you. 
> 
> I think rather than an impressive literary endeavour, I had to write this as some sort of catharsis? It's not a work I'm particularly pleased with or consider good in any sense, and I'm shipless so I can't even claim that it's a shameless indulgence in ereri fix-it goodness, but I still felt like the ether of my imagination needed a little bit of fix-it magic because the scenario just disturbed me! Like grit in an oyster, this is my shoddy half-baked pearl formed from that irritation.


End file.
